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Response from Dr R.Joseph about his view on the subject of afterlife

July 22nd, 2013, 06:04 PM

Hello all,
I started the thread about "Split-Brain" article, based on Dr. Rhawn Joseph's article.
I was eager to him personally. There is payment for 15 minute e-mail consultation.I submitted and shortly after got detailed and interesting response. What I liked about the response is recognition by Dr.Joseph of our limitations,and frankly admitting that he can only speculate. I was afraid that he would be dogmatically "no afterlife" person,but it was not the case,and I respected his open-mindness regarding the topic.Here is the full response,I hope you find it interesting(though speculative):

Alexander--you are not asking for a 15 minute consultation, but an entire book!

First, lets recognize that our ability to comprehend is limited by the capacity of our brain and our senses. Other animals, bats and whales for example, can sense information about their world and create a cognitive map of that world which our own brains are, at present, incapable of processing. Thus, we can only make educated guesses about consciousness and the mind after death.

Lets consider the possibility that "consciousness" is a feature of the universe, and that our brains merely tap into this vast sea of cosmic consciousness and what we experience as "consciousness" is just a fragment of the whole--like a television or radio receiver only tunes into select channels but cannot pick up wave lengths which are beyond its capacity. A radio has no sense of smell, for example, and can't perceive a wide range of phenomenon with is "out there."

Therefore, it may also be that the brain also serves as a receiver, with different regions of the brain not only sensitive to outside perceptions (auditory, visual, tactile), but to a collective cosmic consciousness; much like a television or radio has different channels. Thus, the consciousness we experience inside our head is but a fragment of the collective cosmic consciousness which is the source of all knowledge, wisdom, creativity, which, depending on the fine tuning our of brain, we merely tap into. An illustrative example: Mozart.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) is considered to be one of the most gifted and talented composers and performers of all time. His famous symphonies include "Jupiter", "Haffner" and "Prague" but in modern time he is best known for his operas including "The Marriage of Figaro", "Don Giovanni" and "The Magic Flute." However, according to Mozart, and his wife, many of his works appeared in his consciousness, "already composed."

Mozart was a child prodigy, and by age 10 he was already a famous composer and performer. However, even at this tender age, this musical melodic genius, and extreme virtuoso, often wrote out his compositions without need for but minor corrections. By age 12 years old, Mozart had written 3 operas, 6 symphonies and over 100 other musical works and had performed for kings and queens.

According to Mozart's wife, Constanze, and as detailed in the Nissens' diaries (based on conversations with Constanze), "In composing, Mozart would get up and walk around the room quite abstracted from everything that was going on about him. He would then come and sit down by her [Constanze], ask her to give him inkstand and paper and would say "Ma chere femme, ayez la bonte de me dire de quoi on a parle" (My dear wife, be so kind as to tell me what it you were saying); then would begin writing out his compositions by her side while she talked to him, without the conversation at all impeding his occupation."

Mozart reported that while he walked about, the music would appear in his mind, fully composed even before he would write it down: "es ist alles komponiert, aber noch nicht geschrieben" ("I have already composed it").

As stated in the Nannerl and Leopold Novello diaries: "When some grand composition was working in his brain he was purely abstracted, walked about the apartment and knew not what was going on about him, but when once arranged in his mind, he needed no piano forte but would take music paper and begin writing."
<P>
Of course, he would also sometimes make minor corrections so not all his manuscripts are completely clean replicas of these stream of consciousness musical compositions. However, despite the fact that some of his compositions have corrections, the fact remains that the composition, in its entirety would first appear in his head, and then he would write down the finished product.

Mozart would also write out his compositions using different colored inks to represent the different instruments. For example, the violin part would be in one color, the piano another, the singing yet another; such that he wrote out his compositions in colorful musical layers; compositions which appeared in his mind "already composed."

Some of Mozart's contemporaries believed that god or an angel had whispered these compositions into his ear; that they came from a heavenly, supernatural source. If Mozart felt that he was a vehicle for these musical compositions which may have had an outside source, is unknown. What is known is that Mozart was aware of the supernatural connection to his music, for when he began composing his "Requiem Mass" (music for the dead), he believed it was a pronouncement of his own death. In fact, he became delirious and died as he wrote it, never finishing it, and was buried in an unmarked pauper's grave.

If Mozart's symphonies and operas had already been composed and deposited in the sea of cosmic consciousness and Mozart's brain was fine tuned to hear the music of the gods which would appear in his mind already composed, much like music can be transmitted to a radio or mobile device, is unknown. On the other hand, Mozart is not alone is possibly sensing his own coming demise--information which is sometimes provided through dreams.

And dreams have been believed to be a gateway leading to the land of the dead--or to that cosmic sea of consciousness which contains all knowledge including all that has happened and which will happen.

Dreaming of Death

Abraham Lincoln dreamed of his own assassination three days before he was murdered, and he told his dream to his wife and to several friends including Ward Hill Lamon who wrote it down. According to Lamon, Lincoln said:

"About ten days ago, I retired very late. I had been up waiting for important dispatches from the front. I could not have been long in bed when I fell into a slumber, for I was weary. I soon began to dream. There seemed to be a death-like stillness about me. Then I heard subdued sobs, as if a number of people were weeping. I thought I left my bed and wandered downstairs. There the silence was broken by the same pitiful sobbing, but the mourners were invisible. I went from room to room; no living person was in sight, but the same mournful sounds of distress met me as I passed along. I saw light in all the rooms; every object was familiar to me; but where were all the people who were grieving as if their hearts would break? I was puzzled and alarmed. What could be the meaning of all this? Determined to find the cause of a state of things so mysterious and so shocking, I kept on until I arrived at the East Room, which I entered. There I met with a sickening surprise. Before me was a catafalque, on which rested a corpse wrapped in funeral vestments. Around it were stationed soldiers who were acting as guards; and there was a throng of people, gazing mournfully upon the corpse, whose face was covered, others weeping pitifully. 'Who is dead in the White House?' I demanded of one of the soldiers, 'The President,' was his answer; 'he was killed by an assassin.' Then came a loud burst of grief from the crowd, which woke me from my dream. I slept no more that night; and although it was only a dream, I have been strangely annoyed by it ever since."

Dreaming of a Past Life

Of course, what I have related to you does not answer the question of what happens to consciousness after death--but perhaps the following will provide some useful hints.

When I was a boy of 3, and for many years until around age 7, I had dreams of a previous life... and in that dream of a previous life I had also been a little boy... playing by the sea shore... by the ocean... and there were crowds of people... and then...in the dream... the ocean began to recede... the ocean waters drew back back back... and I could see shells and fish flopping on the wet sand where moments before there had been ocean... and ships and small boats lay on their sides... and I ran to where the ocean had been, on the wet sand, picking up shells... and many other people also ran onto the wet sand, laughing and talking in amazement that the ocean had pulled back for miles and miles.... and then... and then... and then...

As I walked further and further out to where the ocean had been, picking up giant shells some with wiggling living creatures still inside, and gazing in wonder at what the ocean had hidden but which was now revealed, I heard screams... lots of women and men and children were screaming... and in my dream, they were all running from the wet sand where the ocean had been toward the dry shore...and people on the shore were also running... everyone was running away and screaming... and when I looked back to see why they were running, I could see the ocean... it was still miles away--but it was a WALL OF OCEAN.. a WALL OF WATER looming up maybe 100 yards perhaps even miles into the sky... and in my dream the wall of ocean was rushing forward, to where the ocean had been minutes before, toward where I was standing with sea shells in my hands... and I started running... like everyone else, running running running... and I could see, over my shoulder, behind me, the wall of ocean water coming closer, and closer... and faster faster faster... and I kept running... everyone was running and screaming...trying to get away... and then the towering WALL OF WATER was just behind me... then looming over me... and then it crashed down upon me... and the little boy that I was, in this previous life, drowned.... and then I awoke in my bed... the same boy who drowned, but a different boy...me...

I had this dream over and over... for years. The same dream...

Twenty years later, I learned, for the first time, about Tsunamis--- what I first dreamed about when I was 3 years old... was in fact exactly what happens if there is a giant Tsunamis... the ocean pulls back and recedes... and people foolishly run out to where the ocean was... and then... the ocean comes rushing back as a wall of water drowning everyone who did not immediately run away...

How could I have dreamed so vividly about something 3-year old me, knew nothing about...

Ah, but see, I had other dreams of this same little boy---and it was during Roman times, and I was sitting with my mother who was dressed in robes typical of the Roman period... and down below I could see Roman soldiers marching, and women by a river, washing clothes...

How do these two dreams relate?

On the morning of July 21, 365 AD, an earthquake of great magnitude caused a huge tsunami more than 100 feet high and it innundated and destroyed several towns on the coasts of the Mediterranean, including Alexandria. This is how Ammianus Marcellinus, a Roman historian described it:

Slightly after daybreak, and heralded by a thick succession of fiercely shaken thunderbolts, the solidity of the whole earth was made to shake and shudder, and the sea was driven away, its waves were rolled back, and it disappeared, so that the abyss of the depths was uncovered and many-shaped varieties of sea-creatures were seen stuck in the slime; the great wastes of those valleys and mountains, which the very creation had dismissed beneath the vast whirlpools, at that moment, as it was given to be believed, looked up at the sun's rays. Many ships, then, were stranded as if on dry land, and people wandered at will about the paltry remains of the waters to collect fish and the like in their hands; then the roaring sea as if insulted by its repulse rises back in turn, and through the teeming shoals dashed itself violently on islands and extensive tracts of the mainland, and flattened innumerable buildings in towns or wherever they were found. Thus in the raging conflict of the elements, the face of the earth was changed to reveal wondrous sights. For the mass of waters returning when least expected killed many thousands by drowning, and with the tides whipped up to a height as they rushed back, some ships, after the anger of the watery element had grown old, were seen to have sunk, and the bodies of people killed in shipwrecks lay there, faces up or down.

I have been here before... you have been here before... we will be here again...

What Happens to Consciousness After Death?

I believe the "individuality" of what we experience as our personal consciousness is linked to our body--our personal sense of self--and the ancient Egyptians believed the same, which is why so much effort was made to preserve the body. When the body completely dies, that sense of individual personal consciousness fragments into so many molecules of mind which become one with the cosmic consciousness of everything.

But in some instances, those molecules of mind, now freed of the body, remain tethered together--and why this may be, I don't know, but it could explain experiences likened to ghosts or spirits, including spirits of the dead who return periodically to visit the living in their dreams or on the outer edges of consciousness.

And it may be that these molecules of mind or molecules of memory, including memory of a traumatic death, somehow enter into new minds--and why this happens, I don't know--maybe genetics, maybe because of a nexus in space where the future and the present and the past intersect... I believe, for example, that the past, present and future exist simultaneously--just in different locations in space--and if these moments of time intersect, then a memory of the death of a 3-year old boy from two thousand years ago might some how finds its way mind of a boy two thousand years later...

If the past, present, and future exist simultaneously--then so does your consciousness, my consciousness---which means I may become consciousness of my impending death before I die---but which also implies that my consciousness NOW, can also be a consciousness that exist in the future--and that future, which exist simultaneously with the now, is not limited to my future, but a future which exists after my death...

*****

As stated---you are asking for a book--not a 15 minute consultation---and the best I can do, is speculate.

Thank you for contacting me and requesting my thoughts on this subject.

Comment

Thanks Alex for a good work and thanks to Dr. Joseph for an interesting answer
He seems pretty open-minded, though tends to support a sort of super-psi hypothesis.

Yes, indeed interesting answer, isn't it? First,he readily admits that the only thing he can do is to speculate. But this version - that at death personality largely dissolves and kind of Higher Consciousness continues appears hear and there, though many mediumistic communications demonstrate kind of "personality".

His stories about dreams I found extremely interesting.
And,yes,he seems to be following kind out super-psi, but it also seems very very speculative - especially that memory molecules from 2000 years ago enter brains...